Means are currently available for determining the facing of woodwind instrument mouthpieces. An assortment of feeler gauges, a glass reference gauge, and a separate tapered gauge are used to measure the important parameters of the mouthpiece. One problem with state of the art mouthpiece facing gauges is the lack of precision with which the curve of the facing is measured. Since feeler gauges are employed, the thinnest practical feeler gauge currently obtainable is in the order of 0.0015 inches. A feeler gauge of such dimensions is very fragile and is easily bent or even kinked during the measurement process. More important it cannot tell you where the curve of the mouthpiece starts. The glass gauge commonly employed for measuring the facing is graduated in millimeters whereas the feeler gauges are usually graduated in fractions of an inch. The use of two different systems of measurement can be quite complex for even an experienced instrument repairer.
The purpose of this invention is to provide a single mouthpiece facing gauge wherein all the measurements are fast and reproducible in thousandths of an inch or millimeters with accuracies within a fraction of 1/1000 of an inch.